S5 E3: The Big 3: The Top Categories of Calls to the HR Helpline

Podcast April 2, 2024

• AIM HR Solutions Helpline: 800-470-6277
• Link to AIM HR Solutions’ Services

Transcript:

Pete Wright:
Welcome to Human Solutions, simplifying HR for people who love HR. From AIM HR solutions on True Story FM, I’m Pete Wright. And this week we’re talking about phone calls, y’all.
You ever wonder, as we mention on the show that we have this hotline, you ever wonder what people actually talk about on the hotline? What’s the big dish? Who’s spilling the tea? I am really excited for this conversation because Terry Cook and Tom Jones, my podcast partners, are going to share the top calls that people are sending to us on the hotline. We’re going to talk about P-F-M-L-A, we’re going to talk about how to handle leave requests and navigating adverse actions. I mean, just all kinds of HR stuff. That’s what’s on deck today. Top calls to the hotline.
Terry and Tom, I’m so excited. It’s just free-range today.

Terry Cook:
Yay.

Tom Jones:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
This is such a wonderful topic. We talk about the hotline all the time. We talk about these issues all the time. Let’s talk first about what is the hotline, please? What is the hotline? How do I get to call and complain to you guys?

Terry Cook:
Thanks, Pete. So the hotline is something we make available to people that are actually members of AIM, but they can call us anytime, Monday through Friday, with any HR questions from 8:30 to 5:00. And we even recently added an email address. So, when people have these burning questions that keep them up at night and they’re off hours, they can send that email and know that we’ll take care of it right away in the morning. So, it’s a great service for people. It’s really a help to have somebody else that they can ask questions, bounce ideas off of. I don’t know, Tom, if you’d like to add anything to that.

Tom Jones:
I mean, it’s interesting over time. I think one of the things we’ve learned a lot, Pete, is that when people call us, the HR professionals call us, they really pretty much know the answer. What they want is someone to bounce it off of and talk it through because then there’s no one at their company that has the same insights that one of us on the helpline is going to offer. So it’s a different perspective for them and we might be able to bring maybe the experience of the law, experience of HR careers, is bring that to the table as well. So we offer new insights, but a lot of times people are very aware of what’s going on in their company and how to handle it.

Pete Wright:
Just needing a friendly voice to rationalize, am I crazy right now?

Tom Jones:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
Is what I’m thinking right now. Well, that’s super useful, and I’m going to start calling just to talk to you guys about my daily woes.

Terry Cook:
There you go. We look forward to that, Pete.

Tom Jones:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
Let’s dig in. Now, I said we’re going to talk about the top five calls. Really, we’re talking about buckets of calls, right? And we’re going to start with navigating leaves of absence. What is going on with leaves of absence that is bothering our HR pros, who are calling you about it? Tom, do you want to start?

Tom Jones:
Oh my gosh. It’s easily, leaves of absence is definitely the case, and Massachusetts has a relatively new law called the Paid Family and Medical Leave Law, but a lot of states have it – California, Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey, New England states. A lot of states are coming in with this law in various forms. And the complexity is because now it’s a paid leave, people are very, very concerned about how do I find out if someone has so much time involved on the law, who makes the decision about whether they’re eligible? What can I do if the law says I can’t retaliate against them? How long do I have to wait before I can discipline them for what they do?
There’s a million different subtopics that are built into this law and every state’s feeling their way learning how to do it, because you want to be very careful. Employees have a very good sense of their rights as they should under the law. There’s poster put out there, there’s policies, there’s information being put around, and so folks want to make sure that HR folks especially want to make sure they’re managing it well on their side. Terry, more you want to add?

Terry Cook:
No, I would agree with you, Tom, on the state aspect of it, because it is confusing, and again, we referenced the Massachusetts law, but as Tom mentioned, several states have paid family laws, and if they don’t, there are many more probably coming. But I think it’s also confusing because there are other leaves of absence that HR people are dealing with right now. They have dealt with years with a federal law under family medical leave. They have other laws. There’s other state laws like domestic violence or small necessities, but there’s USERRA for the military leave. So, there’s so many different types of leaves that I think the HR professionals or other business professionals that might call us are really trying to unravel all of these letters of laws that they’re dealing with, trying to figure out how to handle them, how to deal with them.
Tom referenced the paid family leave in Massachusetts. It’s very different from the federal law that a lot of people are used to. It’s a paid leave, number one. It also is available to almost every employee, even if they’re brand new with your company. So it can introduce a lot of different aspects. It’s a lot of companies, doesn’t matter if you’re a small company, still applies to them. So that has a lot of other potential bumps in the road that they’re dealing with, it’s a little different than the bigger companies. So as Tom mentioned, there’s just a lot to these laws and people that are calling us on the hotline are just trying to figure out what they need to do and how to really understand it and navigate it properly.

Tom Jones:
One of the other things, picking up on what Terry said, is that for years, the FMLA, the federal law was that you, the employer, had to make the decision about eligibility. Under a lot of these new state laws that’s been taken away from people. It’s like the unemployment insurance program in some states, where the person goes to file for unemployment, the employer can only maybe offer information. They don’t play a real decisive role any longer as the decision maker in these situations. So it’s really forcing some of the, especially more experienced HR folks to realize they have a new way to look at this that is different than how they used to do it.

Pete Wright:
Tom, you said something in the middle of that description that employees have a good sense of their rights. How often are you getting calls, you guys, where we’re trying to navigate the employee’s understanding of their rights and the rapidly evolving landscape of the law around leaves?

Tom Jones:
I think most people know they have the rights and that the HR people know that, too. I think trickier things, at least in the nuances of every state’s law are things like, what can I do about somebody when they come back to work? The retaliation provision in Massachusetts is fairly broad, which says for the six months after you return to work, you can’t really adversely affect discipline somebody for taking leave. So if I start disciplining an employee, am I doing it for taking leave? Am I doing it for their chronic absenteeism? Am I doing it for something else? And that’s going to be a very tricky minefield that employers are trying to work their way through because we keep looking for court cases that will help give us some guidance. Like there have been over the FMLA for many years and we don’t see them yet in Massachusetts because a lot of companies, I think a lot of HR folks are being very cautious.

Terry Cook:
I mean, I would also add Tom, that I think the only difference is because smaller employers did not have to deal with the federal family medical leave. That was for companies over 50 employees. I think they are the ones that might’ve called more related to your question, Pete, where the smaller companies in Massachusetts might be calling and saying, well, I don’t think they understand. I’m too small of a company to have to deal with this. And then we have to educate them and say, actually, you’re not. So I think when you’re asking that original question, that’s what came into my mind is that maybe the smaller companies that didn’t have to deal with the FMLA, like Tom mentioned, the federal one, they’re the ones that might have employees coming to them saying, oh no, I’ve been told by my family member or my neighbor that I have access to this and that you have to give it to me. So I think that would be what comes to my mind.

Pete Wright:
Uncle Joe’s an attorney and he promises … Explain to me calls that you get around intermittent leave.

Tom Jones:
Oh, that’s probably the worst part of the law for a lot of people. From an employee’s point of view, it’s a benefit because you’re going to be out one day a week or two days a week for medical treatment. And if the documentation supports that, that was true in the FMLA, the federal law way back when too. You would get that time off. The tricky part for a lot of employers is that on the parental leave side, they have to decide do they want to give family? The men say typically it’s the father, bonding leave on an intermittent basis maybe one or two days a week while their partner’s home with the new child so that they can play a role in raising the child or not. But employers find it extremely disruptive. And to Terry’s point about the small under 50 employers that are missing now a person from work that they relied upon, it’s a real challenge.

Pete Wright:
That you’re missing a significant amount of time for one person. The impact on the team is significant, but it’d be even more significant to hire somebody and train them to fill in a day or two a week.

Tom Jones:
Exactly. And hire to find someone

Pete Wright:
Right.

Tom Jones:
Would even be available into that schedule. So the loss is you don’t have to give it to somebody who’s a parent, but a lot of companies are struggling with, can we keep workers? Are we going to treat them better? And so what can we do? It becomes a real challenge for a lot of employers. Are we going to hold on to retain good employees and is this the price we pay for having to hold onto them?

Terry Cook:
And they only can decide on the intermittent leave whether the employer wants to provide it in the situation of bonding with a child. So if it’s a medical reason, they don’t have a choice. They have to allow the intermittent leave according to what the doctor’s note is provided. As Tom said, the notes aren’t given to the companies when it’s the Massachusetts state paid family leave. It goes to either a private insurance company or the state. So you as a company are only given this information to say, this person, Pete, is going to take two days a week off for the next X number of weeks to care for their self or their family member. They don’t have a choice in that part.

Pete Wright:
As an HR pro, you don’t know if I’m going to be taking care of grandma or mom, spouse. You don’t get to know that.

Terry Cook:
Right. We don’t see the notes. And that was a hard adjustment, Pete, to be honest, we got a lot of calls at the beginning, because as Tom mentioned in the federal leave, the HR person knew everything. They had to help make that decision and file that paperwork in their files. And so they were in the know. They felt like they had a control of the situation a little bit. So you would think that not having to make that decision might make them happier because they’re not the ones in the hot seat to make a decision. But for a lot of the HR people, that was hard. That was an adjustment because now they don’t really know all the information they’d like to know because they’re not the decision maker.

Tom Jones:
Nor do they have the authority to know it, which is even the harder thing because HR, it’s been away from them by this law.

Pete Wright:
You have to let go of control and agency.

Tom Jones:
Exactly. And a lot of HR folks, that’s a struggle sometimes. Especially when it comes to compliance issues.

Pete Wright:
For sure. Let’s take, I guess maybe the yang to that yin. What happens when people are taking their leave and then they decide, oh, I don’t think I’m going to come back.

Tom Jones:
Well, I mean, it happens.

Pete Wright:
I had another weird sigh from you. That’s two in a row I had from you, Tom.

Tom Jones:
It happens. It happens. Companies, for whatever reason, most people, if it’s paid leave, are likely to stay, not saying anything until the very end, of that leave. And then they’ll say, “Well, I’m not going to come back to work.” I think under the FMLA, maybe they’d leave earlier than that, than they used to.

Pete Wright:
That’s just strategy, Tom. That’s just strategy.

Tom Jones:
It is. It is. As HR folks learn more about these laws, so do employees and learn about the nuances within the law and what they can do and not do, and how much flexibility there may or may not be. So that’s the reality of the law nowadays. But as we segue into layoffs, companies could weigh people off that are in the leave as long as, I mean, the key thing here is, what’s the reason? Is there a bonafide legitimate reason for weighing somebody off at this point or no? If there isn’t, companies that were in trouble. If they say, “Well, gee, so-and-so has been on a lot of leaves, I want to get rid of them.” That’s a killer, for the company.

Pete Wright:
Because that’s retaliation.

Tom Jones:
That’s retaliation. But if the company says, “Look, we lost a huge contract to do whatever, and that’s what Pete does here at the company, so we’re going to have to let him go.” That makes more sense, defensively.

Pete Wright:
Pete, you’re getting picked on quite a bit.

Pete Wright:
It feels a little bit like, I feel like the podcast dummy. I’m trying to hold my own.

Tom Jones:
But it’s a hard part of the watch.

Pete Wright:
You just laid me off, right on the show.

Tom Jones:
Not yet. We didn’t lose any contact.

Pete Wright:
Mutiny.

Tom Jones:
Didn’t lose any contact yet.

Pete Wright:
It’s all strategy.

Tom Jones:
But again, people are learning on the fly, as they see the law, appreciate the benefits the law offers, some of the opportunities the law office make, [inaudible 00:14:08]. And then, interestingly enough, the other problem that’s a real challenge for a lot of employers is, if I think someone’s committing fraud, what do I do with that information? Because now it’s the state or a private insurance company that makes the decision about who’s eligible. So how do I figure that? Do I give them the information? Will they treat it as seriously as I’m treating it?

Pete Wright:
Well, I mean, you’re asking those as hypothetical or rhetorical questions, Tom, I feel like I’d like an answer to those. What do I do in that case?

Tom Jones:
Well, you complain to the state. You say, “Gee, I believe so-and-so is not really injured. They’re not really sick. They’re not really caring for somebody.” Whatever it might be. And then you rely on the state to investigate and see whether it’s true or not. Rely on the private insurance company. We offer both in Massachusetts, either private insurance or estate plan, as do some of the other states. And you see, well they have to investigate. And I don’t know Terry, if she can do much beyond that at this point.

Terry Cook:
No, I mean, I think all you can do is make the call and really ask people to look into it and trust that it’s being looked into. And I think in our experience when it comes to the state of Massachusetts, a lot of the employers that have either concerns about fraud or they’ve had follow-up questions about different payments that are going out, they seem to be receiving answers. So I’m not 100% sure on the private insurance side, I would think it’s the same. But we have received specific information from our member companies that the state has been pretty good about getting back to them.

Pete Wright:
Okay. Tom already teased. Our next topic is layoffs. We did an episode on layoffs not too long ago, in our last season. And in the spirit of a brief review, what is the WARN Act and what kind of calls are you getting from people who clearly didn’t listen to that episode?

Terry Cook:
Tom, you want to refresh them on the WARN Act?

Tom Jones:
Sure. The War on WARN Act is a federal law that’s called the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. Basically, it got signed by President Reagan in 1988, and it requires employers that have 100 or more employees that if they’re going to do either a major layoff or a plant closing, they must provide up to 60 days advance notice to their employees. If they do fail to do so for whatever reason, the employees can sue them individually or collectively for unpaid wages. That’s really the penalty for failing to comply with the law. It happens in Massachusetts, but again, the threshold’s fairly high. You’ve got to be laying off a 30 workforce or shutting down, and oftentimes unemployment layoffs will be five here, 10 there, and it won’t trigger the rights under the law, but it does occur.

Pete Wright:
Transitioning to the kinds of calls we’re getting, Terry, what are you hearing?

Terry Cook:
Sure. I mean, as Tom mentioned, they’re not all related to the WARN Act, but there are a lot of people that might be seeing a change in their business, as we’ve been reading about and hearing about, and they may have to do layoffs. And so sometimes we walk through that with them and how do they select the people for layoff and what is the safest way that they can look at who’s being laid off? And, more recently, we’ve talked a lot about work sharing programs, so that’s an alternative to layoffs. So with work sharing, and I believe Tom, when we looked it up, there are probably over 30 states that currently have a work sharing program in place, but at least in Massachusetts, work sharing is as the name implies. So if you had somebody that said, “My business is reducing, I lost one contract. I don’t want to lose Pete,” we’re keeping you, Pete.

Pete Wright:
This has been a real rollercoaster.

Terry Cook:
So anyways, if we don’t want to lose Pete and we say, you know what? We could keep Pete busy three days a week, just not five. So the work sharing program would allow a company to apply for what they call a work sharing. So essentially, Pete, you would be able to be paid by our company the three days, and then you would be paid by unemployment for two days, and that way you would still be happy enough to stay. And I as a company would be able to retain a good employee instead of doing a layoff where we would completely lose you because you would want to find another job because you were without full pay.

Pete Wright:
And what’s the long-term prognosis of that relationship, presumably that we’re considering a work share to avoid a layoff because we think we have reason to believe that things will turn around for the business.

Terry Cook:
Yes, that’s exactly right. And then when you apply for work share certainly can speak directly to Massachusetts. They’ll ask you questions like that. They’ll say, approximately how long do you feel this would be occurring? And you usually give them a period of time. And then if it doesn’t change, of course, you update the Department of Unemployment, and if it turns into a full layoff, it does, but at least everybody gave it their best shot to keep the employee actively engaged at the company.

Pete Wright:
Right. I just want a rocking chair and a blanket in a corner by the windows. Is that too much to ask?

Terry Cook:
It’s just not Pete.

Tom Jones:
A lot of companies have used Workshare very successfully around the country. It’s been incredible because of a big help. Interestingly enough, it was also used at the beginning of the pandemic because a lot of companies thought, okay, this can’t go on forever, so we’ll try Workshare because we want to hold on to Pete and they don’t want to lose him. And then eventually they realized that it took a year or more, never. It took a long time to come back the way they were previously operating.

Pete Wright:
Presumes my next question, what’s kind of the long end that the Department of Unemployment is willing to concede work share for an organization in

Tom Jones:
Massachusetts? And I think in most of the other states, too, it’s the duration of unemployment benefits, which is 26 weeks, but it could vary by state, but usually it’s the duration of the benefits that you’ll get.

Pete Wright:
So you’re not applying for a five-year plan?

Tom Jones:
No. No.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Terry Cook:
Some people probably might like it, but depending if they wanted that rocking chair for a couple days a week, I don’t know.

Tom Jones:
I could be right back there again.

Pete Wright:
Sweet spot, to be right in the pocket.

Terry Cook:
But a lot of companies don’t know about the Workshare program. Even people that are calling us on the hotline, they’re just not aware of it.

Pete Wright:
How often do you find when you’re talking to somebody on the hotline that you’re introducing these concepts that they might not have heard of?

Tom Jones:
If we’re in the helpline, we get what, 50, 60 calls a week? I would guess a couple of them. A rake on a regular basis, we’re introducing parts of the laws they’ve never heard of.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Terry Cook:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
And I’m asking that question not to say that people are calling aren’t informed. I’m calling to say, there are some obscure parts of the law that you very well might not be considering. Please call the hotline.

Terry Cook:
And I think that’s a higher number, right? Because if they think about disciplining, they think about terminating, they think about doing some type of adverse action or something else, and we often, our team would often say, “Well, have you considered this? Have you thought about this? Because these could be all issues you’re going to be challenged with potentially legally.”

Pete Wright:
And speaking of things that HR pros think about all the time, it’s drugs, Terry, it’s drugs and drug testing. You’re getting questions about drug testing, and I imagine they start with, “Hey, pot’s legal, can we still test for it though?”

Terry Cook:
We do get a lot of those questions. And not only do they have those questions, but they have the questions of, well, now that it’s legal and the labor market is difficult, we’re finding more people that might fail for marijuana because of what you mentioned, Pete. If it’s legal, they feel like it’s okay. What I have the conversation with many member companies is, I say, “Alcohol’s legal, too. Do you want people to come to work drunk? No, of course you don’t.”
And then you also have to take into consideration the type of positions you have. So if you have a safety sensitive role, you have to be very cautious about allowing somebody that could potentially be under the influence of anything, operating large equipment where they may hurt or kill themselves or others. So again, that’s probably the extreme, Pete, but they’re conversations that people often have with us and trying to figure out what is the right thing for us to do. And we often talk to people, especially when it comes up for medical reasons, medical marijuana, we often encourage people to have the conversation. It’s a requirement. So Tom, I don’t know if you want to talk a little bit more about the interactive discussion that we talk about with people.

Tom Jones:
And again, the whole field of keeping Massachusetts unusual as opposed to many of the other states. Massachusetts has medical marijuana. Obviously we’ve had this in 2012, but there was a court case in 2017 in which the woman had a medical marijuana card. So she was officially a user of medical marijuana. She applied for a job and through the back and forth of the hiring process, she was let go because of using marijuana. She then sued claiming that she was wrongfully terminated because the marijuana was not going to impair her ability to work. It was only going to help her life, would make her medical condition and vote better.
And the net result was the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court came back and said six to nothing in a vote, we believe that if a person is using medical marijuana and they’re not using it at work, so they’re not coming into work stoned or anything like that, and it helps alleviate a disability in which in her case with I believe Crohn’s Disease, the employer needs to engage in an interactive dialogue, just like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Okay, Pete, we understand from this drug test you’re using marijuana on the weekend. You’ve told us that you’re not using it at work. We’re going to basically trust that, but we’re going to go back and forth and figure out, maybe you can’t do this job. Maybe we have to move you to a different job, or maybe we have to move you to a different thing, a different function you can perform. But this has raised an issue. So if any Massachusetts, I go to hire Terry, and Terry produces a card, says I’m a medical marijuana certified user, our conversation changes. I can’t just say, “Well, you can’t come work here because you’re going to fail the marijuana test.” I have to say, “You can’t use marijuana at work, you can’t be impaired at work.” And the big problem is there’s no test out there like there is for alcohol. It can test quickly impairment. The alcohol tests, you can find out how much someone’s blood alcohol level is very quickly. You can’t do that with marijuana the same way ‘cos it could stay in your body for weeks.

Pete Wright:
I’m not sure. This gets back to the other, the first question though, which is, somebody fails a test for marijuana, presuming they’re tested in the first place in a state where marijuana is legal. To that very point, Tom, is that grounds for not hiring somebody outright?

Tom Jones:
Could be. Could be it’s still in some company – some companies have federal contractors because the Department of Labor, they have to test people for drug-free workplace compliance. So it could be that they have to say, “You can’t work here.” Other companies may have safety sensitive people, like Terry said, working with sharp machinery and electricity.

Pete Wright:
Our fictitious manufacturing organization, AIM Manufacturing.

Tom Jones:
Exactly.

Pete Wright:
If there’s somebody operating heavy machinery, maybe working in, I don’t know, finance, somebody who works with a lot of cash, maybe, would be a consideration? Do we still do that? Is that a thing?

Tom Jones:
The rules are safety sensitive.

Pete Wright:
Okay.

Tom Jones:
And generally that’s been someone who drives vehicles, someone who works with sharp instruments, razors, knives, things like that. Somebody who works with a lot of cash, probably not, unless they’re, that would take a lot of work to figure out how that would be …

Pete Wright:
I don’t want this to color my past, but I had friends in high school who were denied jobs working in cash because they failed the drug test. I was not one of them, but I just remember those were the days.

Tom Jones:
Well, that was a different time. That’s right. And I think you look back at, we do put out this annual reference guide, and back in the early 90s, it had eight pages. It now has 90 pages to it, and so it’s become a [inaudible 00:27:02].

Terry Cook:
Times they have changed.

Tom Jones:
It’s a much more complicated, challenging job than it used to be.

Pete Wright:
For sure.

Tom Jones:
Groups like ours, groups like other groups, these podcasts, all these things are vital to keep people up to speed with what’s going on in the world because it can be so, so challenging for a lot of these HR folks in different issues.

Pete Wright:
Well, so, regardless of hiring, are there any broad strokes that you’re telling people on the hotline about how, I guess, specifically first Massachusetts is dealing with recreational marijuana and, more broadly, employees who are working in other states.

Tom Jones:
A lot of recreational marijuana is starting to take effect around the country, so more and more states are doing it. So I think, exactly Terry’s point, you treat it like alcohol.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Tom Jones:
It’s you tell people, look, the rules that this company are the following. If we test you and you have drugs in your system, marijuana in your system, then the consequence is the following. And I think you want to make sure you tell people upfront, what’s going on so that there’s no surprises down the road. But I think more and more we’re seeing companies do the opposite, which is remove cannabis from the testing process because they’re desperate …

Pete Wright:
Is that not something, that’s not something you guys would recommend? You keep it in the process? Or are you advocates for taking it out?

Terry Cook:
I think when it’s safety sensitive positions, because I have a manufacturing background, I would be nervous to take it off the panel because I would feel like I would have a concern that people weren’t thinking I was doing my due diligence and making sure that it was a safe workplace. So I would say from a safety sensitive workplace situation, I would be hesitant to recommend taking it off of the panel. Tom, I know you were starting to talk.

Tom Jones:
No, no. I was going to say the opposite. I don’t know what all the members would do, but I think it makes sense to know. So then I can sit down with this fictitious Pete again and say, “Look, Pete, the test has come back. You failed. We’re making a quid. However, you may not use cannabis at work. If we catch you impaired at work, that is it. Because we need somebody working right now.” And so companies are in the struggle of trying to figure out how far do they push it.

Pete Wright:
It’s still an employee’s economy. Right.

Tom Jones:
How far do you push it? But it’s a challenge. It’s a real challenge for a lot of companies because they recognize people can get high, they drink and whatever.

Pete Wright:
For sure.

Tom Jones:
But that doesn’t mean they can do it at work because you don’t want to be in this position where, like Terry said earlier, people are going to cut off a finger, cut off a hand, or do something and hurt somebody else, not themselves.

Pete Wright:
This is the thing, though, Tom and Terry, I feel like this is what we’re talking about here when you, as soon as you say impairment, what we’re talking about here is we already have regulation for dealing with alcohol. Employees know not to come to work drunk, and when they do come to work drunk, there are consequences. We already have processes to deal with that. I guess the biggest question is how is that any different from this now legal in most places, recreational drug? And it sounds like not very.

Tom Jones:
Not very, but I can test somebody for alcohol and I’m going to know the answer, even if I do it within a quick timeframe. Marijuana, I’m testing you now, and you were high three weeks ago, it still shows up.

Pete Wright:
You’ll never know. And I’m totally …

Tom Jones:
Fine.

Pete Wright:
Fictitious Pete is totally fine.

Tom Jones:
Right. Exactly right. And you’re doing a good job. And that’s a big fight because people say, well, Monday through Friday, I do fine. If I get high Friday night, what do you care? I’m back at work Monday morning sober.

Pete Wright:
So navigating leaves of absences, understanding layoffs, a quick review of the WARN Act and seriously complex navigating the drug testing ecosystem – that really makes up the bulk of the calls that you’re getting right now? Did we miss anything that you really want to hit it out of the park as we wrap up today?

Terry Cook:
I think we’ll always get calls on discipline and terminations. I mean, I think those are just common. People want to discuss their scenarios because their scenarios may feel different to them or it may be different than what they’ve dealt with in the past. So they want to talk that through. I think those are a lot of calls, workers’ compensation cases, and some of the longer term workers’ compensation cases are often calls that we receive. And you will hear, Pete, you’re referring to things as the hotline we have in the past, and Tom said helpline. So, just to clear it up for everybody. It was called the hotline. We transitioned it to the helpline. So if you do hear both words, they’re both okay.

Pete Wright:
They’re both okay.

Terry Cook:
They’re both okay. But, the calls come in. I’d say related to a lot of that, there’s a lot of pay questions specifically in Massachusetts because we have laws such as pay equity law and the treble damages law, which means employers can get caught up in paying three times whatever the award should be for what the missed wages were for the employee. So, I’d say most days could be anything. I would tell you that the leaves of absence is definitely something that dominates a lot of our calls, especially within the last year or so. Tom, would you agree?

Tom Jones:
Absolutely. The only thing I can think of is return to work issues. When is our fictitious Pete ready to come back to work?

Pete Wright:
I mean, you saw him in the corner.

Tom Jones:
How far can we push it? Can we get a medical exam? Do we have to get a doctor to sign off? Do we just take him coming back to work? And sometimes when he’s on a leave under the law, it’s very clear what the criteria are, but other people take a few days off and the company’s like, can you bring him back? What’s the issue? And it’s a challenge. Post worker’s comp injury, post ADA, disability claim, post FMLA. It’s really tricky for a lot of companies.

Terry Cook:
It is.

Pete Wright:
Well, if we learned anything, it’s that no calls are off limits. You’ve got a question, call, and you’ll find the number and email address in the show notes of this very episode. Last question, and whether it stays in is up to the quality of your answers. Do you have, for each of you, a best call ever?

Terry Cook:
I would say a funny call I may have had was probably related to people trying to determine if they can date their subordinates.

Pete Wright:
We didn’t talk anything about relationships. Carrie, how did you let that go?

Terry Cook:
I don’t know, but I think it’s one of those things where I guess you could think it’s funny. It wasn’t funny to people that are calling because Tom and I recently did a round table on relationships in the workplace and it was fascinating.

Tom Jones:
For Valentine’s Day, Valentine’s Day.

Terry Cook:
For Valentine’s Day. So we brought up all these statistics, Pete, that would scare you. But, I mean, in all honesty, people spend most of their time with people they work with. So those kind of calls should not actually be unusual because any of us in human resources know that relationships happen at work. But it’s one of those things where it was sometimes there’s back and forth conversations around it and just really trying to get us to tell them how to do it. How can they …

Tom Jones:
Not the relationship, the other [inaudible 00:34:50]

Pete Wright:
Not the relationship. They don’t want HR help dating.

Terry Cook:
No, no, I hope not.

Tom Jones:
I’ve had similar ones.

Terry Cook:
Drama line.

Tom Jones:
I’ve had two in the last month. I’ve had two love triangles in the workplace.

Pete Wright:
Oh dear.

Tom Jones:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
Two in the last month, Tom. What’s happening?

Tom Jones:
I know, and again, it catches everything.

Terry Cook:
It’s Valentine’s Day.

Tom Jones:
Terry’s talking about the boss and the subordinate, and that was absolutely true in both cases, but it’s just the HR person’s pulling their hair out thinking, what do I do? It’s one thing to have a little bit of a flirtatious relationship with a coworker dating, whatever. It’s a whole other thing to get into this love triangle because all three people are in the workplace. There’s violence, there’s anger, there’s so-and-so is encroaching on my relationship with somebody else. It just really can get messy very quickly.

Pete Wright:
Don’t hesitate to call, y’all. Don’t hesitate to call, before violence in the love triangle. Please call and get help at the hotline. Check the show notes for the link and the number. Thank you both so much. Terry and Tom, always a pleasure to podcast with you.

Tom Jones:
Thank you, Pete.

Terry Cook:
Thank you, Pete.

Pete Wright:
And thank you everybody for downloading and listening to the show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Again, you can find all the links notes in the show at aimhrsolutions.com or anywhere you’re subscribing to your podcasts. And jump in, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music. We’re everywhere great podcasts are served. On behalf of Tom Jones and Terry Cook, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you next time right here on Human Solutions, simplifying HR for people who love HR.